U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/762,553 entitled "Remote-Control System for Large Rooms Having a Reception Range Assigned to Each Receiver" and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/762,845 "Remote-Control System for Large Rooms Having Multiple Decoders Coupled by a Bus" were filed on even date herewith and assigned to the same assignee. The disclosures in these applications are hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates generally to remote-control systems, and more particularly to a remote-control system which permits grouping of transmitters that send wireless messages, and which permits grouping of receiving decoders, which preferably control actuators.
German Patent document No. DE-A-3 803 920 discloses assigning specific transmitting commands in the decoder to specific outputs through programming. The known decoder is set up to learn information words from a given transmission format and, after that, to recognize them again. Infrared signalling is used as the transmitting medium between the transmitter and the decoder.
In building systems engineering, one often needs to selectively trigger various actuators with a single transmitter command, whereby the actuators control devices that are connected at any one time. In addition to lights, such devices can be motors for window shutters or diverse apparatus and devices used in building systems engineering. Also, in particular, one often needs to trigger several actuators with a single transmitter command, so that a grouping results.
The present invention is directed to the problem of developing a remote-control system for large rooms with free grouping.